The Agrarian History of Sweden

60 Pages·2017·1.82 MB·English

http://www.diva-portal.org
This is the published version of a chapter published in The agrarian history of sweden : from 4000 BC
to AD 2000.
Citation for the original published chapter:
Widgren, M., Pedersen, E A. (2011)
Agriculture in Sweden: 800 BC-AD 1000.
In: Janken Myrdal & Mats Morell (ed.), The agrarian history of sweden : from 4000 BC to AD
2000 (pp. 46-71). Lund: Nordic academic press
N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published chapter.
Permanent link to this version:
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-57991
The Agrarian
History of Sweden
4000 bc to ad 2000
Edited by
Janken Myrdal & Mats Morell
stiftelsen lagersberg
nordic academic press
The publication of this work has been realized with the generous
support of Stiftelsen Lagersberg, Eskilstuna, Sweden.
Nordic Academic Press
P.O. Box 1206
SE-221 05 Lund
www.nordicacademicpress.com
© Nordic Academic Press and the Authors 2011
Translations: Charlotte Merton
Typesetting: Stilbildarna i Mölle, Frederic Täckström, www.sbmolle.com
Maps and figures: Stig Söderlind
Cover: Anette Rasmusson
Cover image: ‘The harvest’, a painted tapestry by Johannes Nilsson
(1757–1827), from Breared in southern Sweden.
Photo: Halland’s Regional Museum, Halmstad.
Printed by ScandBook, Falun 2011
ISBN: 978-91-85509-56-0
Contents
Introduction 7
Janken Myrdal & Mats Morell
1. Early farming households, 3900–800 bc 18
Stig Welinder
2. Agriculture in Sweden, 800 bc–ad 1000 46
Ellen Anne Pedersen & Mats Widgren
3. Farming and feudalism, 1000–1700 72
Janken Myrdal
4. The agricultural revolution in Sweden, 1700–1870 118
Carl-Johan Gadd
5. Agriculture in industrial society, 1870–1945 165
Mats Morell
6. The tension between modernity and reality, 1945–2010 214
Iréne A. Flygare & Maths Isacson
7. Swedish agrarian history – the wider view 257
Janken Myrdal
Notes 271
Statistical appendix 285
Mats Morell, Carl-Johan Gadd & Janken Myrdal
Bibliography 302
Index 330
Theme texts:
The rituals of agriculture 38
From peasant rebellion to parliamentary Estate 98
A wealth of clearable land 158
Changes in food consumption 188
Women and men 224
chapter 2
Agriculture in Sweden
800 bc–ad 1000
Ellen Anne Pedersen & Mats Widgren
The subject of this chapter is the growth and development of agriculture
in the Iron Age, which in Swedish prehistoric chronology refers to the
period between roughly 500 Bc and Ad 1000. However, many of the
decisive moments that were to determine the agriculture typical of
the Iron Age had already occurred back in the Bronze Age. We have
therefore extended our discussion by some three hundred years to 800
Bc. In this ‘long Iron Age’, settlements, fields, meadows, and pastures
expanded into land that had previously been used more extensively. The
expansion, however, cannot be characterized as simple, even, gradual
growth. Instead, periods of expansion, colonization, and deforestation
alternated with periods of recession, retreat, and reforestation. New
technologies and practices were introduced – the tools, crops, and
farming systems that would increase productivity. Moreover, through all
the different eras of the Iron Age, agriculture was influenced by shifting
socio-political structures and processes that had a profound impact on
production, settlement patterns, and the landscape. As a result, agrarian
landscapes underwent a series of radical changes. As will be shown,
these changes were often as fundamental as the much later, and much
better known, land reforms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Iron Age agriculture was neither primitive nor stagnant.
The emergence of mixed farming
From the southernmost province of Sweden to agriculture’s northern
margins, there was a well-documented expansion of agricultural open
lands during the first millennium Bc. The dramatic opening up of
former forests and woodlands in Skåne during the late Bronze Age
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agriculture in sweden 800 bc–ad 1000
Age Fårarps Bjäresjösjön/ Krageholms-
Bussjösjön
BC/AD mosse Bjärsjöholmssjön sjön
1500
1000
500
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
1020304050607080 102030405060708090 102030405060708090 102030405060
% total pollen % total pollen
Figure 2.1 The proportion of pollen and spores that indicate arable, meadows
and other open land. Pollen diagrams from four different localities in a transect
from coast to inland in the Ystad area in southern Sweden. Source: Berglund
1991, 414.
clearly represented a decisive step towards the present appearance of the
agricultural plains of the south. Cultivated and grazed areas expanded,
topsoil erosion increased, and pastures and meadows with semi-natural
vegetation came to dominate for the first time. The general expansion
of human influence also paved the way for the most rapid increase of
floristic diversity in the whole Holocene epoch. The land was transformed
into a humanized mosaic of fields, meadows, pastures, and managed
woodlands. Simultaneously, in the eighth century Bc, people started to
cultivate barley, wheat, and oats along the lower reaches of the Ume River
on the Baltic coast, at 64° N, which was then the northernmost limit
of cultivation. The expansion into this northern area was short-lived,
however, for cultivation ceased in about 400 Bc, and not until after Ad
500 would there again be any agricultural expansion in these areas.1
Agricultural lands expanded all over Scandinavia, but the character
of farming also changed and came to include new elements: cattle
byres, hay-meadows, permanent field systems, and iron implements.
Scandinavia became part of an agricultural system of mixed farming,
which for two millennia was to dominate a wide belt from Ireland in the
west across the northern half of Europe.2 It was not until the twentieth
century, and the advent of artificial fertilizers and fossil fuel traction, that
the mutual dependence of the two farming sectors began to dissolve.
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the agrarian history of sweden
This agricultural system owed much of its existence to the environ-
ment, with its short vegetation period and temperate climate. However,
rather than assuming that it was environmentally determined, we now
have the data to interpret the move towards mixed farming as a more
complex process. Much of the archaeological and palaeo-ecological
research of recent decades has been intended to establish with greater
precision when the various elements were introduced.
Stalling or out-wintering livestock
The earliest evidence of cattle byres along the Dutch and German North
Sea coast dates to 1800–1500 Bc. In Denmark, the earliest stalling of
cattle has been dated to some centuries later, while in Sweden to the
first millennium Bc. From Skåne in the south to Uppland in central
Sweden, similar long-houses from the first millennium Bc have now
been found. Such three-aisled long-houses, with their characteristic
division between the dwelling unit and one or two rooms with other
functions, become increasingly common in the archaeological record of
this period. In some cases it has also been possible to use construction
details, phosphate mapping, and the distribution of finds and ecofacts
to prove that one part of the long-house was indeed used for stalling
livestock and storing winter fodder.3
However, the fact that byres have been documented for a given period
does not prove that indoor stalling had become the dominant practice
in livestock-keeping. In Östergötland, a large number of isolated hearths
have been found. None of them has any close connection to settlement
sites, burials, or ancient fields. Maria Petersson argues convincingly that
in their sheer number they represent nodes in a ‘well organised system
of grazing, where the animals were kept outdoors, winter as well as
summer’. The dates of these isolated hearths (roughly 1000 Bc to 1 Bc)
are contemporaneous with the opening up of grazing lands documented
in pollen diagrams. The dates of similar hearths in Uppland support this
evidence of an expansion and intensification of grazing on the outlying
lands of permanent settlements. During this period of agricultural
expansion, it thus seems that both increased winter stalling and large out-
wintered herds were part of the picture. Moreover, the balance between
stalling and out-wintering may have varied geographically. Even in the
southernmost areas of Sweden, where otherwise there is early evidence of
stalled cattle, out-wintering seems to have continued to play a role well
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agriculture in sweden 800 bc–ad 1000
into the first millennium Ad. Using the age distribution of slaughtered
animals, Stig Welinder has shown that in the second century Ad one
part of a herd in this area was out-wintered.4
In the Swedish literature, climate deterioration in the first millennium
Bc has often been advanced as the explanation for the introduction of
stalling. This increasingly cold period has also been given the name,
taken from the Edda, of the fimbul winter (from the Icelandic fimbulvetr,
great winter). Yet the connection to a period of cooling is not as obvious
as it would seem. Cattle can withstand cold weather and snow up to a
certain depth, and are able to browse bushes and trees. Thus the choice
farmers had to make in the past, between out-wintering and stalling, in
northern Europe as in other parts of the world, did not simply reflect
climatic zones or other environmental factors. There are several reasons,
beyond climate, that may explain why stalling was introduced. Stalling,
through the closer connection between humans and animals, permits
more intensive milk production, including a more productive use of
fodder-producing areas. Furthermore, the connection between stalling
and the use of cattle manure on intensively cultivated infields is one part
of a more general intensification of agriculture. As has been shown for
many other parts of the world, the increased role of private property
and the security of the herd can be seen as factors that contributed to
the spread of cattle byres during this period. While climate certainly
played a role (especially in wet and windy areas) there is thus good reason
to regard the introduction of winter stalling not as an environmentally
driven adaptation, but rather as a new technological and social complex
that spread from central parts of Europe to Scandinavia in the Bronze
Age and early Iron Age.5
The first hay-meadows?
Haymaking has long played a central role in the farming systems in
Sweden, and hay-meadows of different types are a characteristic feature of
the historical landscape. It is not surprising, then, that great efforts have
been made to document the origins of mown hay-meadows. Different
evidence has been adduced to date the introduction of haymaking: the
indirect evidence of the implements used (sickles or scythes); the exist-
ence of stone-wall enclosures around wetlands; and palaeo-ecological
evidence. For the first millennium Bc, the strongest evidence comes
from palaeo-ecology.
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the agrarian history of sweden
Many pollen diagrams for southern and central Scandinavia show
that during the first millennium Bc alders (Alnus) decreased while a
variety of key plants indicative of managed wetlands increased. The
most probable explanation for this shift in pollen frequencies is that
alder carrs were cleared for grazing or mowing, and in the process
were transformed into sedge fens. From this we can infer that the first
expansion of hay-meadows on wetlands began in 800 Bc in Skåne.
Lagerås has shown how a fen in northern Skåne was cleared in the
period 700 Bc to 400 Bc, and further supports his contention that
this managed wetland was a hay-meadow (rather than just a grazing
area) with an analysis of the ecological characteristics of the vegetation
that grew there.6
A close examination of the vegetation characteristics has shown that
in Skåne there were mown hay-meadows on dry ground from at least
200 Bc. The palaeo-ecological analysis indicates ‘rich, fresh meadows,
most probably mowed in early summer, and grazed during late summer
and autumn’. Hay-meadows on fens probably came earlier than on dry
ground, possibly because sedge fens were easier to harvest with a sickle,
while the thinner growth of grasses and herbs on better-drained ground
became easier to harvest only with the arrival of scythes.7
Permanent field systems
During the first millennium Bc, farmers in Scandinavia started to
invest more in permanent fields. Stones were cleared from the land and
collected into clearance cairns, while cultivation led to the formation of
lynchets and banks. It is from the patterns of field boundaries and the
distribution of clearance cairns that we can discern, on a broader scale,
what the general appearance of cultivated fields in different parts of
Sweden may have been. On the Baltic island of Gotland and in Skåne
the field systems were of the same character as in continental northern
Europe, and consisted of extensive areas of ‘Celtic fields’ – a term for
small square or rectangular fields bounded by sandy or earthen banks.8
Investigations in some of the many extensive field systems of this type on
Gotland show that they emerged in the eighth century Bc, and were in
use until the second century Ad. While Celtic fields from this period are
common in Denmark, they are less well documented in nearby Skåne,
but there is reason to believe that they were widespread there during
the first millennium Bc. The fields were tilled with wooden ards, or
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agriculture in sweden 800 bc–ad 1000
scratch-ploughs, which since about 800 Bc had been equipped with
detachable wooden ard-shares to cut through the topsoil. Archaeological
excavations of fields in different parts of Sweden have documented the
characteristic criss-cross pattern associated with ard tillage; indeed, the
fact that the fields were cross-ploughed is one reason why so many fields
from this period are square or rectangular in shape.9
However, the clearest evidence of arable fields in the first millen-
nium Bc comes from the prevalence of large clearance-cairn fields,
especially in the interior of southern Sweden. The remnants of these
field systems cover substantial parts of the present forests, extending
well beyond what would later become infields and meadows. Many
of them originated in the late Bronze Age, from the ninth to the sixth
centuries Bc. There are few visible boundaries between separate plots
in this type of ancient field. There seems to have been some short- or
long-term field rotation, which together with the palynological evidence
bears witness to a landscape that was a mosaic of small cultivated fields
alternating with secondary woodland.10
Crops
The manifest changes in the farming system in the first millennium Bc
were that the rearing of livestock and the cultivation of fields became
more closely integrated. But the composition of the crops grown also
changed. The main crops until the late Bronze Age had been millet
(Panicum miliaceum), emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum), einkorn (T.
monococcum), spelt (T. spelta), and nude barley (Hordeum vulgare var.
nudum). However, in the course of the first millennium Bc, hulled
barley (H. vulgare var. vulgare) had an ever-increasing role, and from
then on came to dominate amongst the grain crops in Sweden for more
than two millennia. There is no simple explanation for this change.
The cooler climate could be a reason why the cultivation of millet and
emmer wheat decreased, but that can hardly explain the decline of
spelt, since in the same period the cultivation of spelt increased in the
British Isles as a substitute for the climatically more sensitive emmer.
Another explanation may be that the older grains had more fragile
ears, so that it was simpler to harvest them ear by ear. Better sickles,
especially from 100 Bc on, made a more efficient harvest possible, but
might at the same time have favoured the cultivation of less fragile
grains: new harvesting techniques may thus have influenced the choice
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